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Gödel numbers were invented by Leibniz a few hundred years earlier. It's not known whether Gödel knew about this when he proved incompletness, but given that Gödel was a serious Leiniz scholar especially later in life, and held him in highest esteem, it is not impossible that he did.

That said, Gödel had many more great ideas.



It's probably more accurate to say that his great idea was to recognize what you could do with Gödel numbers: meta-mathematics.




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